[REVIEW] OnePlus Nord 4: Metal, fast, and efficient

OnePlus Nord 4 is a smartphone that, thanks to its unique metal processing, brings back the good old beginnings of this brand. We’ve always really liked the metal OnePlus models, and the new Nord release gave us a dose of nostalgia. Even though it doesn’t directly resemble older model lines, we’d already forgotten how it feels to hold a phone with a metal back. Besides the interesting design, the OnePlus Nord 4 also offers a very good set of specs for a properly set price tag. Everything looks great right from the start. But is that just a first impression, or is this mid-range OnePlus really that awesome? Find out in this just-starting review of OnePlus Nord 4.

Where to buy OnePlus Nord 4?

We ordered the OnePlus Nord 4 from the online retailer GShopper in the global version. The item will be delivered to you from a Chinese warehouse. Before shipping your order, don’t forget to apply a discount coupon. It will give you a price that’s much lower compared to the one in Slovakia. We ordered the version with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of internal storage. There’s also a version with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB storage.

At the time of writing the review, only this higher-memory edition was available from the seller. However, the price is still even lower than the base version sold in Slovak e-shops. The seller also sent us a European plug adapter, though in this case we can’t really use it. The phone is intended for the global market, and a charging adapter isn’t included in the box.

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OnePlus Nord 4, global version

EU warehouse, AliExpress, 16 + 512 GB 376,98 €FR warehouseOnePlus SUPERVOOC 100W EU charger 32,25 €Standard Shipping GShopperCN warehouse, 16 + 512 GB, duty-free delivery 371,12 €Free Shipping

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Updated 2. 7. 2025 at 08:16

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Technical specifications

Package contents

For the OnePlus brand, the box is quite thin. The manufacturer didn’t include a charger, so you won’t be able to make use right away of the 100 W charging potential that the phone supports.

Besides the smartphone, you’ll only find a brief manual, a tool for removing the slot for two nanoSIM cards, and the red charging cable that’s typical for this manufacturer, with USB-A to USB-C connectors. Don’t look for a protective case in the box. The display does come with a nice touch though—OnePlus applied a protective film to the screen.

Design

This is a subjective take, but the design of this model is great. We haven’t had a smooth metal back smartphone in our hands for years. It’s nice to remember what it was like. After a longer period of inactivity, the device feels pleasantly cool to the touch. The metal also helps dissipate waste heat, but at its core the OnePlus Nord 4 doesn’t produce much thanks to efficient components. In our case, we have the black color option available for testing.

GShopper currently has only two other color alternatives in stock, and in our opinion they look nicer and more unique. We’re talking about the green and silver variants, with the silver one featuring an interesting pattern on the metal back. If you want to stand out, we definitely recommend getting that one. There’s no smartphone that looks similar to the OnePlus Nord 4 in this color.

Our black variant looks very elegant. In any case, the top quarter of the back is made of glossy glass, and it has two cameras and two LED flash units. The rest, including the sides of the device, is made of a metal unibody construction, with the middle decorated by the OnePlus logo. You can also see plastic parts along the edges, which allow signal transmission to the internal antennas.

OnePlus Nord 4 is made as a single, robust, and solid unit. We’re sure it’s also durable. When it comes to dust and water resistance, the smartphone meets the IP65 standard. The bezels around the display are narrow and almost symmetrical – only the bottom bezel is slightly thicker.

On the upper part of the left side, there’s a three-position switch for sound profiles, which is typical for this manufacturer. It switches between silent mode, vibration mode, and the classic mode with a loud ringer. The phone is fairly large, but it feels quite comfortable in the hand even with its weight of 199,5 grams, which places the device among the heavier ones. Dimensions are 162,6 x 75 x 7,99 mm. By the way, OnePlus is also known for using quality vibration motors in its models. And it’s no different this time.

Display, fingerprint scanner and speakers

A 6.74-inch Fluid AMOLED display with a 120 Hz refresh rate, resolution 1240 x 2772 px (450 ppi) and a maximum brightness of 2150 nits. This is what you can look forward to with the OnePlus Nord 4. In practice, it’s a very nice, color-accurate display that stands out for its minimalist bezels and overall quality. In direct sunlight it stays easy to read and is great for consuming multimedia content. The aspect ratio is 20:9.

In the settings, your refresh rate will be set to automatic by default, meaning the system decides on its own when it’s best to use 120 Hz / 60 Hz. You can also set a fixed refresh rate manually. 120 Hz gives you a smoother experience, while 60 Hz allows the phone to last longer on a single charge.

It also plays HDR10+ video recordings great and can reproduce 1 billion colors. We don’t even need to talk about viewing angles – they’re excellent. At night, you’ll appreciate that the screen doesn’t flicker at low brightness, and of course there’s also a blue light filter that works fantastically.

There are two speakers, and their output is loud and relatively good quality. The sound response is fairly flat, with mids dominating and the bass slightly reduced. Still, they’re among the better speakers in this price range. They won’t disappoint even when watching videos. The display includes an optical fingerprint reader that’s very fast and accurate. Verification almost always happened immediately, without the need for any additional attempts.

Power

The manufacturer decided to use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset, known for excellent efficiency. Great performance is also there, and it will be enough for practically all purposes, including gaming. Don’t expect the highest possible frame rates, massive AI / ML power, or the fastest video rendering. For those needs, buy a flagship. If you’re satisfied that the phone stays fast every day without stutters, even when you use multiple apps at the same time, the OnePlus Nord 4 is a great choice.

It doesn’t get hot even during demanding activities like benchmarks. The record stability result reached, for example, in 3DMark. Strong results were also achieved in AnTuTu Benchmark and Geekbench 6. Worth noting: there’s also a 128 GB storage version. It uses slower UFS 3.1 memory.

The editions with 256 GB and 512 GB use faster UFS 4.0 storage. During our testing, we didn’t encounter any performance-related issues. Everything works in a surprisingly fast and smooth way. OnePlus Nord 4 is truly a joy to use.

Cameras

Let’s start with the specifications of the individual lenses. The primary Sony LYTIA sensor with a size of 1/1.95″ offers 50 MPx resolution, a focal length of 25 mm, PDAF, support for OIS and EIS, plus an aperture of f/1.8. Digitally, you can zoom in up to 20x in real time.

It’s paired with an 8 MPx Sony sensor with a 112° field of view and an aperture of f/2.2. There’s a dual LED flash. Up front, you get a 16 MPx (f/2.4) camera. You can record video with the main sensor in 4K at a maximum frame rate of 60 fps. Its quality is average.

Photos are very nice, vivid, and detailed even when viewed on a computer screen. We praise OnePlus for the good contrast, dynamic range, and level of detail. The colors are slightly enhanced, but not overdone, and the result looks really great. Most users will definitely like the photos.

Night photos only turn out well if you can keep the phone very steady. In poor lighting, we notice significant focus issues and the results are often blurred shots. If it works out, though, and you have steady hands, evening shots can be surprisingly detailed.

When shooting in direct sunlight, you may run into “lens flare”, meaning reflections from the lens caused by strong light sources like the sun, or at night from street lamps. OnePlus Nord 4 is definitely one of the better camera phones in its price category. The same can be said for video, which is very solid too.

The ultra-wide camera, however, is worse—we’d rate it below average. The results don’t completely disappoint, but they probably won’t wow you either. 8 MPx for capturing enough detail with a wide field of view simply isn’t enough.

Video sample

Battery and charging

Inside the phone there’s a large 5500 mAh battery that supports 100 W SUPERVOOC wired charging. The adapter isn’t included in the box, but the manufacturer claims you can charge the phone up to full in 28 minutes with it. Don’t expect wireless charging—this beautiful metal build would not deliver electrical energy that way anyway.

With one charge, you can easily expect battery life of up to two days. In one hour of watching YouTube video, the battery indicator dropped by only 5%. For everyday, light use, the device lasted with a full charge for three days, with a screen-on time of 5,5 hours.

After the wait, you finally got around two days of battery life with 7.5 hours of SOT (Screen On Time). If you want to drain the OnePlus Nord 4 in a single day, you’d have to use demanding apps and keep the display on for more than 8 hours. The battery endurance is so impressive, and it’s one of the biggest strengths of this model.

The software implements several methods for tracking, or rather preserving, the battery health level. The “Smart charging” feature will monitor your charging habits and adjust the time when your phone should be charged to 100% of its capacity. For example, if you charge overnight, the system will stop charging once it reaches 80%, and then top up again—for instance—right before your set alarm. If you really care about the battery’s long-term lifespan, you can also set a permanent, fixed charging limit—up to 80% only.

The battery settings section also shows its current health. If you need to get the most out of the battery, you’ll find various power-usage optimization options, as well as an opposite mode: High Performance, which prioritizes performance at the expense of battery life.

Operating system

While the hardware at least hints at the old days of OnePlus, the software does the exact opposite. OxygenOS is no longer what you might remember. It’s already a skin built on top of ColorOS from Oppo. And yes—it's very clearly similar. Still, we believe you’ll like it. It offers plenty of useful features, deeper customization options for the user interface, and its tuning is on an excellent level. The amount of animated transitions looks great.

During testing, the device had OxygenOS 14.1 installed, which is based on the operating system Android 14. In the included screenshots, you can see that the software includes several preinstalled apps. Luckily, you can uninstall them without any issues. The skin also provides gesture controls and other helpful features that you’ll be able to discover gradually. Over the device’s lifetime, expect up to 4 major Android OS updates. Official support will likely end with the Android 18 version.

Connectivity

OnePlus Nord 4 is a modernly equipped smartphone with which you can connect wherever you need. It meets almost all modern communication standards, including 5G, 4G LTE (including the B20 band), Wi‑Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.4. You can make contactless payments in physical stores using NFC. The infrared port can be used to control various supported electronics you have at home or in the office.

Finally, let’s also mention support for various globally used location systems like GPS, Glonass, Galileo, QZSS, and more. Your connection to the mobile data network is always stable, fast, and reliable. We also appreciate the clarity of phone calls. In the OnePlus Nord 4, you can insert up to two nanoSIM cards. Some people may be disappointed by the lack of eSIM support.

OnePlus Nord 4: Final verdict

The price at which the OnePlus Nord 4 is sold on the Slovak market is, in our opinion, quite good. It’s a very competitive device at this price point as well. However, if you use our offer with the available coupons, it will be an exceptionally good buy. The newest OnePlus from the Nord lineup also goes head-to-head with some of the kings of price-to-performance, such as POCO models ( POCO F6 / POCO F6 Pro).

OnePlus Nord 4 is one of our most popular mid-range smartphones today. You’ve won us over with several strengths that outweigh the negatives. These include the lack of a charging adapter or a protective case in the box, a weaker ultra-wide camera, only average video, and less effective stabilization—meaning you need to hold the phone more firmly when taking night shots. The metal build is really nice, but some people may miss wireless charging. For most interested buyers, it will likely come down to minor things you can live with. We definitely recommend buying this smartphone.